Volume 6 Issue 5, May 2020

Keeping pace with food demand and climate change requires continuous genetic improvement of crops that, in turn, relies on the availability of genetic resources. Access to these resources is complicated by the need to establish benefit-sharing arrangements when accessing and using such genetic resources.

Leaf development follows a common principle but is also flexibly tuned in different species in a spatiotemporal manner. A novel regulatory mechanism controlling leaflet formation has been identified in Medicago.

Analysis of Arabidopsis seedling responses to daytime temperature regimes identifies an mRNA hairpin as a novel thermosensor in plants.

Genetic redundancy is a problem when studying auxin in flowering plants. The minimal auxin response system in the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha allows a detailed and thorough probing of the specificity of auxin response factors in planta.

Maintenance of active photosystem II requires rapid turnover of the D1 protein, which is encoded in the chloroplast genome. Nuclear expression of D1 is now used to improve photosynthesis and crop yield under normal and heat-stress conditions.

Integrating natural selection and other organizing principles into next-generation vegetation models could render them more theoretically sound and useful for earth system applications and modelling climate impacts.

Dichotomous root branching evolved in both lycophytes and euphyllophytes, followed by lateral branching in separate extant lineages during the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, illustrating extreme cases of divergent evolution.

Previous studies showing that mast seeding was synchronized at large scales were constrained to hundreds of kilometres, but this continental-scale study shows that such events are asynchronous, driving spatial and temporal impacts for a wide range of species.

Mutations in the ZmDMP gene induce maternal haploids and facilitate breeding in maize. Now, a study extends this system of maize to dicots, showing that loss-of-function mutations in the Arabidopsis ZmDMP-like genes also induce maternal haploids.

The minimal regulatory logic and the evolutionary history of the auxin signalling pathway are explored by studying the much simpler auxin network in Marchantia with a combination of genetic, domain shuffling and biochemical strategies.

While numerous explanations for reduced pest incidence in organic farms have been noted, plant resistance remains understudied. This article demonstrates tomato resistance to leafhoppers through soil and microbial health.

A reconstruction of the genomic history of japonica and indica rice over 9,000 yr with geographic, environmental, archaeobotanical and paleoclimate data.

Global meta-analysis of plant species diversity effects on trophic levels of ecosystem functioning, finding beneficial impacts from increased diversity.

Plant leaf structure is classified as either simple or compound. A simple leaf is a single leaf, whereas a compound leaf is composed of several leaflets emerging from a single compound leaf primordia. Liangliang He, Yu Liu and colleagues have identified a regulator of compound leaf formation in Medicago truncatula, leading to the discovery of an undefined class of eudicot-specific BEL1-like homeodomain proteins and a molecular framework controlling trifoliate leaf patterning.

Temperature-dependent translational enhancement of PIF7 promotes gene expression for thermomorphogenesis in Arabidopsis during warm daytime. This enhanced translation is mediated by an RNA hairpin which shifts conformation at higher temperatures.

The authors demonstrate the negative role of GOLVEN peptides during lateral root initiation in Arabidopsis, at the very early stage of the first asymmetric cell division of lateral root founder cells, and identify the receptors for these peptides.

The PDK1 lipid-dependent kinase controls PINs and auxin transport through a phosphorylation cascade that includes AGC-type kinase PAX. The double pdk1 mutant reveals auxin-related phenotypes in vascular development.

The PDK1 lipid-dependent kinase controls PIN1 and auxin transport through a phosphorylation cascade that includes AGC-type kinase D6PK. The double pdk1 mutant reveals auxin-related phenotypes such as reduced gravitropism and lateral roots.

Heat stress damages photosystems, especially photosystem II (PSII), thus affecting photosynthetic efficiency. To counteract the thermal damage, a new bioengineering strategy is introduced by expressing a PSII subunit D1 under the control of a heat-responsive promoter in the nuclear genome. The strategy has been tested and found to be effective in Arabidopsis, tobacco and rice.

The structures of four plant phytochrome sensory modules, including an A-type phytochrome, illuminate the function of these red/far-red photoreceptors and suggest the existence of a nuclear localization signal specific to the phytochrome A lineage.